Welcome to Episode 108 of Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans. In this episode we introduce our listeners to our new Patreon before moving on to the main portion of the episode, our roundtable discussion with author, editor and Pathfinder co-creator James L. Sutter and author, editor and publisher Mark Smylie. We chat about a host of topics, including the importance of being able to move fluidly among mediums, what it means to have a brand, and whether a band is a requirement of awesomeness (minor spoiler: James and I think so, but Brad and Mark aren’t so sure). We also talk a bit about the future of publishing and what authors need to think about now as they’re trying to break into the industry, and we get a bit of inside information about James’s new novel The Redemption Engine and Mark’s new novel The Barrow. This was a longer show than usual for us, but it was such an interesting and entertaining conversation that we couldn’t help but keep the recording going, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you like what you hear, don’t forget to check back next week when we’ll have our interview with Jim Butcher posted. Until then, thanks as always for listening to the show, and please continue to spread the word!

A mind-blowing talk!!!… I appreciated the thesis Greg adventured about an overlooked necesity in the part of the readers for novellas. Really it’s hard to me to get it, I mean, the industry position about a narrative form that combined so well the best of both short stories and novels. I for one, am a great fan of reading novellas and novelette, specially that of the pulp era. Maybe, truth be talk, it’s because is harder to design and distribute a good story within the narrative scope of a novella. You have to combined a deeper characterization and plotting with the straight line argument of a short story. Regarding the many facets of the creative process, dealing with different media, well that’s a complex issue indeed. Both authors gave honest and insightful answers. But as Mark said, any given genre author already turn his novels into graphic novels, comics, RPG, movies or a conceptual industrial or metal music album in his/her head. Even so, the question of how many of the Big Names, the ones that has changed the field with a masterful opus, have been engaged in different art forms at the same time. Fon instance, G. R. R. Martin, made it clear when he turned his back to Hollywood scripting to devote himself totally to his literature.

As always, Odilius, thanks for the kind words (I can’t take credit for the novella point–that was Brad–but totally agree with you both that the novella is an underused form). Interestingly, although George did devote himself to his literature at first, he did find his way back to the small screen with the success of Game of Thrones…so as you say, almost every genre author thinks at least somewhat about multiple methods of delivery for a given story he or she is imagining.

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